Neubau-Fahrzeug Nr. 3-5 Finished! 05-12-13

I like your models Bill. They're dirty and dusty and not beat all to hell. I can't wait to see this one finished.

Thanks Joe! Glad to have you along for the ride.

Excellent advance my friend.  The detail of the kit looks great!

Regards!
Rodolfo

Thanks Rodolfo! A severe cold has set me back the last couple of days so have been unable to paint...that time of year I guess, hard to avoid the 'bugs' that circulate especially since my wife teaches at an elementary school.

One of the downsides of the holiday season is that it's also cold season! I've been sidelined with a cold the last few days and that ruled out any possibility of painting, so I made use of the available time to take care of one of the less-glamorous-but-necessary tasks...cleaning up the tracks for this beast.

The kit supplies the individual links on sprues of 40 links with three attachment points per link.

The instructions call for 124 links per side so I removed and cleaned up a total of 250 links just to have a couple handy when the time comes to assemble the track runs. The links aren't handed so I only separated them into two bags in terms of the split of links necessary for each run.

Doing this kind of thing while listening or watching a football game makes the repetition less onerous...and I'm glad to have it out of the way! Hopefully next weekend will afford some time to get things back on track for the paintwork that needs to happen for the build to progress.

Ahhh yes....armor model knitting....at least you made progress. Hope you feel better

Rounds Complete!!

They look similar to Pz I link. Are they the same size.

Mike

Bish

Right, i knew they looked familier, wrong tank. I thought it odd that such a big vehicle would have Pz I links.

Happy New Year ,Bill 

Hope you feel better soon.  I was just thinking what a lot of work to to clean up three sprue points on each link. .....  and I was looking at the M/K tracks you sent me.....guess I will find out soon enough ! LOL

Football was great Sunday..the Packers/Viking game was great...feel bad for Dallas and Tony Romo[00ps]

tread[H]

Thanks Terry!

tread

Yeah, cleaning the tracks is very tedious, but the final results is a great recompense! .   Attentive to your progress my friend

Regards!
Rodolfo

It's times like this when I am grateful to find Dragon kits that come with magic tracks.

Thanks rodolfo!

Blitzwing

Bill - fun way to spend the Holidays! LOL. Hope you are feeling better. You could have indy tracks for that bad boy, but they are Friuls (ATL-119) and would likely double the cost of your build... 

Dave,

That's true! I am feeling much better, thanks! The NFL playoffs are stealing my benchtime for this and the next weekend so there will be a slight pause in the build as a result! :)

Dang Bill, you beat me to it!  I received this same kit last year for Xmas and was planning on doing a Blog here sometime this year!!  Oh well, its still great to see you're doing one and I always learn something from your great Blog posts!  Sorry to hear that you've been under the weather, hope you get well soon and back to the bench.  None of my NFL teams did well this year , but I guess that means I can spend more weekend time at the bench!!

Are you planning on painting this in a two-tone scheme?  Most of the recent builds on this AFV depict it in gray/brown, but I've been wondering if these weren't repainted in overall panzer gray before being deployed.

Hey there Ernest! Good to hear from you and sorry I stole your thunder! The Neubau's in Norway were pretty well photo-documented and there are some great shots that show them parked in a field with excellent lighting that shows the two-tone paint scheme very well. See below (it's also the basis for some of the markings options DML provides), but yes, to answer your question, I will do it in the grey/brown two-tone scheme when I get to the paint stage. Later on when they were brought back to Germany they were repainted solid grey but never saw any additional combat before they were scrapped.  

Well, that's a photo I've not seen before!  Thanks Bill!  It does show the two-tone pretty well.  That's how I'll do mine.  I figured they would be repainted after 1940, but I didn't know what happened to them after Norway.  Too bad they were scrapped....they would have been awesome in a museum!

Have to agree with you there Ernest but that much quality steel just couldn't be left sitting with the war effort going on I guess.

Bill, you are the KING of Brown/Grey schemes! lol! This one should be no different!

Shame about those annoying track clean ups!

Glad to hear you're feeling better too--I go slammed with the flu over the Holidays too, and am just coming back from it. It seemed like a nasty one this year. I couldn't stop coughing.

Thanks Karl! Tracks are always a necessary evil and this beast has more than the usual share because of the hull size for sure! I was lucky in that it was only a cold and not the flu, my wife teaches elementary school music (aka the germ factory!) so I ALWAYS get a flu shot every year...even if the mix isn't all that much changed from the previous year.

This particular build has slowed down a little due to the NFL playoffs and of course the resumption of my MBA classes...sure will be glad when they are done at the end of March, almost there!

Nice to hear your feeling better Bill. Thats a really good photo, it shows off the two tone scheme very well, somthign that most photo's don't seem to do.

Ernest, i hope your still going to do a WiP on this kit.

It also provides some nice inspiration for the weathering later on once the tracks and suspension are installed...but I don't want to get too carried away just yet!

Bish

Ernest, i hope your still going to do a WiP on this kit.

Not intending to hijack Bill's thread, but yes I will be doing a WIP on my kit.  Actually the kit was a gift from my coworkers and I promised them I'd do the WIP so they can follow the progress.  The only difference is I'm going to use some Friul metal tracks that I bought last year....the reason escapes me now why I'm not using the kit tracks!! 

I am looking forward to see how Bill is going to do the tracks.  On most of the WIPs I've seen on this kit, the tracks are added during assembly and painted while on the suspension.

My plan of attack with the tracks is to assemble them as runs (top and bottom) and paint off the vehicle then install after the suspension is in place. It's the main reason that I haven't been able to make any recent progress as I need a large block of time available to get the hull painting out of the way prior to getting the suspension in place.

bufflehead

Bish

Ernest, i hope your still going to do a WiP on this kit.

Not intending to hijack Bill's thread, but yes I will be doing a WIP on my kit.  Actually the kit was a gift from my coworkers and I promised them I'd do the WIP so they can follow the progress.  The only difference is I'm going to use some Friul metal tracks that I bought last year....the reason escapes me now why I'm not using the kit tracks!! 

I am looking forward to see how Bill is going to do the tracks.  On most of the WIPs I've seen on this kit, the tracks are added during assembly and painted while on the suspension.

I got a GB running that this would fit into nicely.

A lot of guys seem to add the tracks before painting. I prefer to paint them off the vehcile and add them at the end. I just don't get how those guys do it.

This weeks update canceled due to PITA tracks!!

Rounds Complete!!

Something like that Mike! Although the real culprits are NFL playoffs and having to read 6 chapters for my Marketing class.